German Protestant Association

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The German Protestant Association (also General German Protestant Association or simply Protestant Association , abbreviated DPV ) was an association of German Protestants , which according to § 1 of its statutes on the basis of Protestant Christianity a "renewal of the Protestant Church in the spirit of Protestant freedom and in harmony with the entire cultural development his time ”aimed at.

Emergence

In the course of the “New Era” in the Grand Duchy of Baden , from 1860 there were calls for self-government by the Evangelical Regional Church , which was previously led by the Evangelical Upper Church Council, which was under the Ministry of the Interior . The new church constitution of June 1861 strengthened the position of the parishes and introduced a general synod to represent the people of the church. In order to secure representation in the synod for the liberal forces in the church, but also to expand the democratization of the church and, if possible, to realize it in other regional churches as well, theologians and lay people regularly met for conferences in Durlach . The fourth Durlach Conference , which was held in August 1863 under the chairmanship of Pastor Karl Zittel from Heidelberg , stimulated the idea of ​​regularly recurring gatherings of those German Protestants who are convinced that the path of ecclesiastical restoration that has been on the path of church restoration for a long time has brought the German people to Christianity more and more alienating. On the basis of a number of theses drafted by Professor Daniel Schenkel from Heidelberg , the founding and convening of a German Protestant Day was united and its main purpose was the initiation of a German national representation across the Church.

At the preliminary assembly held on September 30, 1863 in Frankfurt am Main , attended by 131 notables from all major German Protestant regional churches, the Protestant Day was converted into a Protestant association on the proposal of the Berlin Union Association . The aim was formulated to leave the theological work for the liberation and purification of the doctrine from the still prevailing dogmatism to Protestant science, while on the other hand to consider the expansion of church constitutional and community life and the promotion of practical church activity as the main area of ​​its activity. In addition to Schenkel, Richard Rothe was particularly influential in theology .

The final establishment of the association took place at its first actual meeting in Eisenach on June 7th and 8th, 1865, in which 300 theologians and 200 lay people took part. The Heidelberg constitutional lawyer Johann Caspar Bluntschli chaired this and also the first annual Protestant Days , the plenary meetings of the DPV. According to the unanimously adopted statutes, the Protestant Association wanted to work in particular to ensure that the congregation had its rights in relation to the hierarchy and thereby also had its own real life; he wanted to seek to promote everything that conditioned the moral strength and welfare of the people and for this purpose gather and unite capable forces from the entire German Protestant people.

effectiveness

The members of the DPV gathered in local, district or state associations. They had their special representation at the Protestant days. The management of the business was in the hands of a committee, especially the office (since 1874 in Berlin).

As early as 1866 and even more since 1870, the Protestant Association was essentially active in the national sense at the same time and, at its meetings , demanded and advocated in advance almost all of the measures that led to the Kulturkampf in Prussia and to constitutional changes in the Evangelical Church. His liberal stance, however, provoked opposition from many church authorities in Germany. In many German regional churches, religious members of the Protestant Association could not get employment, in Prussia mostly not get promotion. Only in the Palatinate state church , where the Protestant Association of the Palatinate , founded in 1858, joined the DPV as a state organization, did it have its stronghold and gained lasting influence.

In connection with the restorative turn in church policy in Prussia, which went hand in hand with the resignation of first the President of the Prussian Evangelical Higher Church Council , Emil Herrmann , and then the Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs Adalbert Falk , the DPV came under general suspicion and lost its importance almost everywhere. The establishment of the Evangelical Federation in 1886 also contributed to this, which continued the anti-Catholicism of the DPV, but was far more successful. In addition, the new generation of liberal theologians (especially, but not only from the circle around Albrecht Ritschl ) turned away from the form of church liberalism shaped by Rothe and Schenkel.

At the turn of the century, the association, which had not held any Protestant days between 1890 and 1896, was able to consolidate its position. In 1910 he convened the World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress with other liberal groups . Under Secretary General Wilhelm Schubring and President Paul Luther , who both belonged to the German People's Party , the DPV was able to gain further influence in the Weimar Republic . During the time of National Socialism, he tried to maintain a neutral position between the German Christians and the Confessing Church . After 1945 he joined the League for Free Christianity .

Organs of the Protestant Association were u. a. the Protestant leaflets appearing in Berlin (initially Elberfeld) and the yearbook of the German Protestant Association (Elberfeld, 1869–72). The liberal Berlin Protestant church newspaper and the German Protestant newspaper published in Bremen were close to the association .

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedhelm Borggrefe: Liberal, Social, Protestant ( Memento of the original from June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Pfälzisches Pfarrerblatt , 2006 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pfarrerblatt.de